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Type: 
Conference
Description: 
The imaging x-ray polarimetry explorer (IXPE) was launched on December 9, 2021, from Cape Canaveral into a low-Earth equatorial orbit. The mission, led by NASA in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency (ASI), features three identical telescopes, each with an imaging x-ray photoelectric polarimeter at the focus of an x-ray mirror assembly. Each focal-plane detector includes a set of four calibration sources powered by a 55Fe nuclide to monitor the detector’s performance. Of these sources, one produces polarized x-rays at two energies and the remaining three generate unpolarized radiation. Here we present the status of this monitoring program, starting from installation of the flight nuclides before on-ground environmental testing of the observatory through recent on-orbit measurements during science operations.
Publisher: 
SPIE
Publication date: 
31 Aug 2022
Authors: 

A Di Marco, F Muleri, S Fabiani, F La Monaca, J Rankin, P Soffitta, L Baldini, E Costa, E Del Monte, R Ferrazzoli, C Lefevre, L Maiolo, F Maita, A Manfreda, A Morbidini, SL O'Dell, BD Ramsey, A Ratheesh, C Sgro, A Trois, AF Tennant, MC Weisskopf

Biblio References: 
Volume: 12181 Pages: 302-313
Origin: 
Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2022: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray